introduction

Translating the object, objectsin translationTheoretical and methodological noteson migration and materiality

Andrea Ciribuco and Anne O’ConnorNational University of Ireland, Galway

The year 2020 saw the close of a decade that was dominated by migration debatescentering around contested borders such as the Mediterranean and the US-Mexico border. The new decade opened with a global pandemic that complicatedtransnational mobility, social interaction and the relationship between people andobjects/spaces. This special issue concentrates on the role of tangible translationin the lives of those for whom translation is a daily reality: migrants, refugees,exiles, and asylum seekers. It explores theoretical and methodological avenuesregarding the material dimension of translation with contributors entering intodialogue with a variety of research fields, from postcolonial literature to sociolin-guistics, from book history to the ethnography of intercultural communication.At this crucial time of encounter and distance, transformation and uncertainty,the special issue responds to the interest that translation scholars have shown formigration in the past two or three decades, adding an innovative material per-spective.

Why ‘tangible translation’?

In 2017, one of the guest editors of this special issue (Ciribuco) commenced field-work for a project on language learning and translation in the lives of Africanasylum seekers in the Italian town of Perugia.1 Two years of fieldwork brought

https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.00052.intTranslation and Interpreting Studies 17:1 (2022), pp. 1–13. ISSN 1932-2798 | E‑ISSN 1876-2700© John Benjamins Publishing Company

1. The project (2017–2021) was called “Language Integration and New Communities in a Mul-ticultural Society (LINCS)”. This special issue was conceived within the context of the project’sfinal conference “Translating the Neighbourhood. Migration, dialogue and spaces of translationin the 21st century” which took place online on November 2–3, 2020.

the researcher into contact with settings such as refugee reception centers, class-rooms, community gardens and cultural centers. While the research did not havea specific material focus at first, the material aspects of everyday translationalexchanges were too evident to ignore: okra fruits could become the occasion todiscuss the translation of African foodways and food-related terms into Italian(Ciribuco 2021); while the omnipresent smartphone offered asylum seekers thepromise of machine translation in the palm of their hands (Ciribuco 2020). At thesame time, the other guest editor (O’Connor) was exploring the importance ofmateriality in religious translations (2021) and the implication between the mate-riality of media forms and translation practices (2022). It became clear to botheditors that the rich methodologies developed for the study of material culture/materiality were an important, but neglected, resource for translation scholars,offering new insights into the pathways of translation, particularly relevant, butnot limited to, the context of migration.

Studies on migration have demonstrated the importance of objects in shapingmigrant memories, and how they can become symbols of belonging, badges ofidentity, links in transnational chains, and occasions for creative hybridization(Daniels et al. 2020). The coexistence of people in super-diverse spaces (Vertovec2007) brings together not only different languages and cultures, but also differentobjects: from food to clothing, from technology to books, from work tools tomusical instruments (Basu and Coleman 2008). Objects are often the only testi-monies left after dangerous migrant trajectories have run their course. The pas-sage of asylum seekers across the Mediterranean, for example, has generated adebate on how wreckage and other lost objects may be made to “speak” for thepeople who lost their lives at sea (Gatta 2016; Mazzara 2019). If and when individ-uals on the move reach their destination, objects from “home” continue to play acrucial role in catalyzing their memories, nostalgia, and attachment to the cultureof their origins. Culinary objects and food items are prime example of this (seefor example Ray 2004; Abbots 2011; Sen 2016). Everyday objects that appear mun-dane in a migrant’s country of origin can act as powerful, immediate links acrosstime and space. Their practical use becomes “inextricably linked with the senseof place, home, and identity” so that “their value transcends the actual day-to-dayutility. In time, they become live presences and symbols of a past that endures alsobecause of them” (Bartoloni 2016: 102). Objects found and acquired in the hostcountry, on the other hand, often become tangible proof of improved social sta-tus – Burrell (2008), for example, observed how brand-new laptops could be usedby Polish immigrants in Britain in the mid-2000s as proof of their newly acquiredwealth.

In the special issue, we have asked translation scholars to engage with thecomplex material and tangible aspects of trajectories of migration. What type of

2 Andrea Ciribuco and Anne O’Connor

translational exchanges happen around objects, because of material affordances,or in opposition to material constraints? What impact do they have on migranttrajectories? Inevitably, this means engaging with theories and methodologies ofsocial and cultural inquiry that over the last few decades have considered the roleand significance of objects.

Objects and languages

A variety of approaches are possible in the analysis of the cultural significanceof objects. Many scholars, drawing on approaches proposed by Appadurai, viewobjects as symbols or signs that reveal or signify underlying beliefs (Appadurai1986). It is also argued that the values embedded in and transmitted by an objectcan provide insights into the cultures and societies that produced and used theobjects (Berger 2009). In this scenario, objects can be seen to be “telling thestories” of different types of linguistic and cultural translation. This “reading”of objects in the context of their changing situations seeks to elicit the culturalencoding that takes place in the object. However, since the late 1990s, therehas been a move away from the view that language/objects encode meaning tothe view that language/objects are “agentive in the discursive co-constructionof meaning” (Burkette 2016:318). Material culture studies now often encouragesanalysis that does not simply consider an object as providing aesthetic embellish-ment or symbolic significance; rather, it highlights object-based agency. Termedthe “new materialism,” this approach argues that material things have a range ofcapacities that go beyond the human sense of knowing and that things must beconsidered in themselves, and not always positioned in relation to their impact onhuman concerns (Hazard 2013: 64). Scholars propose that things wield an agencythat can shape human practice and culture (Fowler and Harris 2015) and attemptto tease out the implications of binding objects in a dialectic with humans. In ana-lyzing objects and in assembling the social, Latour has been influential in encour-aging that attention be paid to how objects relate to other objects, humans andanimals; how they gain meaning through proximity, and how they interact withtheir environment (Latour 1996, 2005).

A growing field in material culture studies has addressed the interactionbetween objects and the senses. Sensory engagement through touch, taste, smell,sound, and sight have opened new ways of understanding the human/objectnexus and its importance. The growth in food studies attests to this interest, andthe inclusion of two articles about food translation in this special issue is indica-tive of these developments. The concern with sensory interactions furthermoreintertwines with studies of affect and emotion thus expanding our understanding

Translating the object, objects in translation 3

of human experiences with material objects. Sensory interaction with materialitycan also be a catalyst for linguistic process as humans come up with words anddiscourses to define the objects and environments they come into contact with –words and discourses that crucially may not be the same in different contexts.

Extensive investigations into the relation between language and objects havecome in recent times from the fields of applied linguistics and sociolinguistics.Several linguists have focused in the last decade on the importance of the materialcontext in the interactions of multilingual individuals. Studies on “linguistic land-scapes”, which look at the interplay of signs in different languages as tangibleproof of the activities of their speakers in a given locale, have flourished (seeLandry and Bourhis 1997; Gorter 2013). Many scholars now convincingly assertthe need to consider language, objects, and spaces together as a “semiotic assem-blage” (Pennycook 2017; Canagarajah 2018; Kusters 2021). Furthermore, emergingmethodologies in the study of multilingual interaction consider “the role of e.g.speech, signs, mouthings, gestures, images, smells, and objects in interactions;studying how these different resources make meaning in specific constellations”(Kusters 2021: 184, our emphasis). These methodologies enable a finer under-standing of spaces inhabited by people and objects from around the world –such as corner shops in diverse metropolitan areas (Zhu, Otsuji, and Pennycook2017; Karrebæk 2017). Researchers may also look at personal collections of objectsto gain a better understanding of how their owners’ linguistic repertoires haveevolved (Ros i Solé 2020).

Translating the object

With respect to the flourishing of linguistic research that considers the relevanceof materiality for linguistic exchanges, the material aspect of translation is com-paratively less developed. The “cultural” (Bhabha 1994; Bassnett and Lefevere1998) and “social” (Wolf 2011) turns in translation and interpreting studies have,however, paved the way for an evolution of the discipline that considers the rel-evance of translation as part of the social fabric of nations, cities, and otherlocales – and therefore, for a study of translation in material contexts. Over the lastdecade, a significant number of translation/interpreting scholars have respondedto such developments in the discipline by taking a spatial approach to the studyof translation, demonstrating that translation and interpreting practices (or theabsence thereof ) have a key impact on the everyday workings of multilingualcities (Cronin and Simon 2014; Simon 2012, 2019; Meylaerts and Gonne 2014) andnations (Gentzler 2008; Wolf 2015). Looking at places that have a history of trans-lation means listening to the echoes of “overlapping stories” about places, and

4 Andrea Ciribuco and Anne O’Connor

to “experience competing versions of history,” in which each language presents adifferent perspective on the meaning of the place (Simon 2019: 1). By examiningtranslation in situ, some researchers have also adopted an ecological understand-ing, which looks at the transfer of meaning between individuals, non-humanbeings, and the surrounding environment (Cronin 2017, 2019; Marais 2019).

The connection between material culture and translation is a recent devel-opment in the discipline; but translations have always been impacted by themedia in which they appeared, and this connection becomes even more crucialin today’s interconnected world (O’Connor 2019, 2022). Littau’s publications inTranslation Studies (2011; 2016) called for greater attention to materiality andtranslation, underlining the importance of tools as well as the media of commu-nication in translation. Subsequent to these publications, others have taken upthe call to explore materiality as a constituent factor in translation processes andoutcomes. Translation and interpreting can be seen as dependent on a variety ofmaterial affordances and physical stimuli: even the most “disembodied” forms ofmachine translation or long-distance interpreting rely, to a certain extent, on thefamiliar weight of a smartphone in one’s hands or a set of headphones over one’sears.

The material framework for translations provides a mode of analysis formediations, intersections and combinations while also accommodating the sen-sorial engagements that happen with objects. Affective meaning, performativeactions, rituals, collective practices can all be explored through the materialprism. It is therefore important to consider the object together with its relatedentanglements, understanding that its meaning does not reside in the object alonebut also derives from its circulation, use, haptic engagement, and affective con-nections (Meyer et al. 2010: 209). In addition, tangibility brings into focus rela-tions and intersections, a questioning of the input of those who contribute to thecreation, circulation and use of an object.

Methodologies developed by sociology, anthropology, sociolinguistics andapplied linguistics to investigate the material world may fruitfully enter into dia-logue with the themes and scope of translation and interpreting studies. On theone hand, this theoretical and methodological encounter can refine our under-standing of the practice of translation and interpreting. If translation entails a sortof movement of words and concepts from one (physical and/or ideal) space toanother, looking at materiality can enable a multi-layered conceptualization ofthe processes and cultural significance unleashed by this movement. Attentionto tangible translation can thus help translation scholars better grasp the totalityof translation and its relationality. On the other hand, the inclusion of themesand questions from translation and interpreting research into this type of inquirycan provide scholars in different fields with evolving perspectives on the relation

Translating the object, objects in translation 5

between language and the material world: not just in terms of the role of(non)professional translators and interpreters in shaping the material world, butalso in exploring how the engagement with the material often implies a form oftranslation.

Tangible translation

If the emotional, cultural, and personal importance of objects in the migratoryexperience is undeniable, looking at it from a translational point of view meanslooking at the various ways in which the significance of a “thing” is expanded andtransformed to encompass the movement of meaning across different landscapes.Objects can emphasize translation’s role as a force impacting the worlds thatmigrants and refugees inhabit. The works collected in this special issue exploresome of these operations across a variety of contexts, working toward a tentativetaxonomy of tangible translations. In presenting the articles collected in this spe-cial issue, we also propose a preliminary version of this taxonomy, and the differ-ent roles that objects may have in translation exchanges: as tools for translation,catalysts of translation, and products of translation.

In the first instance, multiple objects constitute the tools of translation. Fromdictionaries to smartphones, from quills and parchment to microphones, a varietyof objects have made translation and interpretation possible throughout history.They are being used daily by professional translators and interpreters, or by laypersons who find themselves facing the task of translation. Their tangible pres-ence makes translation possible and may influence translation choices. Further-more their absence or unavailability can hinder translation, showing the tangibleeffect of economic and technological divides on the practice of translation andinterpreting.

In the context of migration, scholars have noted how smartphones (and themachine translation applications that may be available through them) enabletranslation and help migrants or refugees negotiate the conditions of hospitality(in Inghilleri 2017’s terms), making translation and communication possible; asCronin and Littau remind us, without tools, translation does not exist (Cronin2003; Littau 2016). The material affordances of translation are a compelling issuefor the field of translation studies as it seeks to understand not just the interactionbetween “carrier” and translation practice, but also the interaction betweenhumans and objects, such as translation devices. The importance of translationdevices for migrants is especially significant (Mandair 2019; Baynham and Lee2019), and a growing number of studies underlines the importance of the smart-phone as a machine translation device for asylum seekers (Kaufmann 2018;

6 Andrea Ciribuco and Anne O’Connor

Vollmer 2018; Ciribuco 2020). In her article in this special issue, Piccoli examinesthe use of physical objects to enable machine translation in a medical setting. Byanalyzing interactions between doctors, patients, and machines in a medical con-text, as the different actors try to make sense of illness across various languages,Piccoli highlights the role of translation in the “semiotic assemblages” of today.With the rise of free, portable and quick Machine Translation tools, some wouldargue that translation has become increasingly disembodied. However, as Piccolidemonstrates, MT devices play their role in a variety of physical, tangible envi-ronments – which in turn has an effect on the outcome of the interaction.

Investigating interpreter-mediated lectures in a South African university (acontext characterized by multilingualism and rural-to-urban migration), Brewis’article looks at the tools that make interpreting possible and their effect on theend users of the interpreting. The analysis of the technology that makes an inter-preted lecture possible draws attention to the role of humans in the communica-tive event, the effect that interpreting tools have on the students’ learning process,their self-perception, and their affective response.

A second type of object, perhaps less immediate to capture, includes thosethat can act as catalysts for translation. This category includes objects that are notnormally associated with translation, such as clothes, foods, and other artifacts.These might have been unmarked everyday objects in the migrants’ countries oforigin, but they can become catalysts for translation in the host community, dueto those features that make them unfamiliar in the new context. They pose trans-lational challenges to migrants and refugees who find themselves presenting andexplaining these objects to a target audience of local communities who may nothave heard or seen these objects before (Pennycook and Otsuji 2015; Otsuji andPennycook 2021). Migrants are therefore tasked with coming up with translationstrategies that will represent these objects in the language of the host country,and in terms that will be acceptable to their new interlocutors. The goal of thesetranslations is to find purpose and legitimacy for those objects in the new con-text – which may have a serious impact on the migrants’ self-representation. Agood example of this process has been captured by Todorova in this issue, as sheexplores the discussions and narratives that emerge when refugees in Hong Kongparticipate in cooking events organized by local charities. Translating their homerecipes into English or Cantonese provides refugees with the opportunity to influ-ence their self-representation and discuss their culture with the host communi-ties; but it also presents them with challenges linked to the different availability ofspecific ingredients in Hong Kong and in their home countries.

The third category, products of translation, includes for example translatedbooks, magazines, and videos, which carry meanings not only across linguisticbarriers but also across material ones. Covering long distances, being transported

Translating the object, objects in translation 7

or smuggled across physical borders, and arriving into distant homes andarchives, these products represent the tangible outcomes of intellectual journeys,enabling the translated text to reach its target audience for as long as it endures inits material form. Belle’s article in this issue considers how religious translationsassociated with communities of German-speaking refugees in mid-seventeenth-century Britain represent tangible traces of the activities of seventeenth-centurynetworks connecting German-speaking exiles, English translators, and theirmany intermediaries. The examination of displacement and exile in the seven-teenth century is facilitated by a materially-informed analysis of the translatedproducts of this human and cultural movement.

In addition, any object whose meaning has changed can be considered aproduct of translation. In passing from one setting to another, the composition,purpose and function of an object may change, to adapt to new needs and pos-sibly appeal to the host community. In this context, articles explore what is lostand what is gained in the process and whether objects retain their capacity to sig-nify the place they come from. This aspect of translation is also present in Todor-ova’s article where a discussion about cookbooks, produced as a result of foodevents, shows the presence of literal translation, substitution and adaptation, butalso demonstrates how the recipe itself has changed, adapting to the availability ofingredients and ultimately assuming new meaning as a form of integration.

A final additional category can be termed narrated objects – these are objectsthat feature in works of fiction and that, in the context of migration and transla-tion, acquire symbolic currency. In the fictional narratives, these objects appearas tools, catalysts, or products of translation, which advance the narratives andcontribute to the development of migrant characters. The presence of objects asimportant narrative devices in fictional representations of migration highlightstheir significance, their developing symbolism and cultural embedding. This cat-egory is explored in the article by Karas who traces the role and significance ofmaterial diasporic objects in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Queen of Dreams. AsKaras discusses in relation to two types of material objects in the novel, interlin-gual processes, such as translation, code switching, loan words, or the intentionalabsence of translation, reflect and promote the gradual and tumultuous culturaltranslation experienced by the protagonist. These processes have a definite mater-ial dimension, symbolized by the protagonist’s mother’s diaries and by the Indianfood on sale in her shop. Their materiality demonstrates various facets of culturaltranslation: taking an activist position vis à vis the hegemonic language and cul-ture; proliferating one’s home culture and voicing it proudly; and wielding agencythrough diverse moves such as establishing a cross-ethnic community. Chianese’sarticle in this issue similarly explores the ways in which typical Italian objects canbecome catalysts of translation in memoirs by translingual Italian authors writing

8 Andrea Ciribuco and Anne O’Connor

in English: their presence in Italian or English in different versions of the textsbecome signs of an Italian identity that is discussed or repressed.

Conclusion: Narrating the object

As Simon and Polezzi highlight in their conversation in this special issue, objectsand artifacts can serve as an important testimony of the journeys of those whomigrate. However, in order for them to make sense, they need to be narrated andinterpreted for a wider audience – translated, if you will. Starting with an objectbelonging to a Holocaust survivor, the conversation explores how this tangibletrace of translation is part of a broader communicative act, and how encounterswith objects are mediated through multiple processes of translation. It also bringsinto the discussion the crucial elements of the interaction between translation andaffect and how objects and narratives can be considered traces of both. Consider-ing objects of varying dimension and form, both Polezzi and Simon explore howthese articulate co-presence, memory and affect, arriving at the suggestive conclu-sion that translation can materialize memory.

Migrant objects point towards a different time and space, bringing conversa-tions into the future or into the past. The works contained in this special issuerepresent an encouragement for scholars in translation and interpreting to incor-porate this awareness in their work, and to explore the methodological avenuesthat are opened in this way. Even as more scholars take up the study of material-ity in translation and interpreting, we are aware that this will entail working withan ever-evolving concept of tangible translation. Many of the researchers in thespecial issue found their work and research impacted by the onset of the Covid19 pandemic. The environments of translation and interaction were similarlyimpacted, with social distancing and constrained mobility reducing the oppor-tunities for people to casually happen to be and talk together. This has alreadycaused a rift between pre- and post-2020 experiences of translation, making itmore difficult for some to research interactions that were previously taken forgranted. Translation and interpreting will change as the material landscape whereculture operates changes; we hope that the work of this diverse group of authorswill serve as a theoretical and methodological reminder of the tangibility of thisevolving material context.

Translating the object, objects in translation 9

Funding

This project has received funding from the Irish Research Council and from the EuropeanUnion’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curiegrant agreement No 713279. This publication reflects only the author’s views, and the IrishResearch Council or the REA are not responsible for any use that may made of the informationit contains.

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12 Andrea Ciribuco and Anne O’Connor

Address for correspondence

Andrea CiribucoSchool of Languages, Literatures and CulturesNational University of Ireland, GalwayUniversity RoadGalwayIrelandandrea.ciribuco@nuigalway.ie

Biographical notes

Andrea Ciribuco is lecturer in Italian at NUI Galway. He is the author of The Autobiographyof a Language. Emanuel Carnevali’s Italian/American Writing (SUNY Press, 2019). He was therecipient of an Irish Research Council/Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship forresearching multilingualism in refugee reception centers in Italy (2017–2021); and was recentlyco-investigator on a British Academy-funded project on intercultural mediators during theCOVID-19 vaccination campaign.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5709-6061

Anne O’Connor is Personal Professor and co-director of the Emily Anderson Centre for Trans-lation Research and Practice in the National University of Ireland, Galway. She is the author ofTranslation and Language in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: A European Perspective (Palgrave,2017) and is Principal Investigator on the ERC-funded project “Pietra: Religious Translation,the Catholic Church and Global Media: a study of the products and processes of multilingualdissemination”. Her research interests include translation history, nineteenth-century literatureand culture, religious translation and material culture.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2458-2223

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